Making peace with pain

So many carry hidden emotional abandonment pain.. I just read a poem about the struggle with pain and it bought to mind that some souls are allotted a heavier load in this life.. Some of us just get more rejection, we struggle to find comfort, understanding, empathy, a place of soothing, validation, recognition and peace.. We look about a long time in the outside world for it and may end up going through so many disappointments, frustrations and betrayals before finding that we have to find a way to hold that hurting tenderly and not ‘cower under it’ (thanks to someone who commented on that post for that expression I just read that prompted this particular post of mine.)

There is a saying in AA that is also a fundamental principle of emotional recovery : “accepting life on life’s terms” or as Joyce Meyer phrases it “accepting it is this way”. And it seems our own peace is often in direct proportion to our capacity to accept what at times seems almost impossible to accept, as well as that we can really only end up deluding ourselves about or coming unstuck if we try to run from deny or avoid.

For the writer of that poem I felt compassion, I also thought, Yes! I have known this struggle and so have so many others, but the sad thing is that sometimes we stay stuck in a very separate place with it all, not understanding it to be just such an archetypal experience of so many other humans. Expressing it and reaching out in love can we not help to lighten the load of another;s burdens.. This song of Rudimental speaks to me of someone offering us a helping hand when we struggle as well as an open heart.

Truly each person’s pain is important. Pain is pain and can be reduced or magnified by the kind of attitude we take towards it.. Suffering often tends to come from rejecting our pain, fear or limitations rather than from actively turning towards, honoring, owning and embracing them. Shining a light on abandonment pain with loving awareness seems to help in some way… the pain may have to be felt over and over and over again..It may not ever have an end. But I am of the firm belief that a light can grow when pain is welcomed in to our hearts not in a self pitying way but with the open heartedness of self love and compassion.. That then becomes a basis for us knowing how to be with and hold tenderly the hurting heart of other human beings with whom we also share deep abandonment wounds and sorrows.